March 23, 2006

Google users have been reporting sightings of a Google Base search box that appears above the main search results when performing certain Google searches.

The sightings have been noticed mainly by American and English Google users over the past 24 hours.

An example is a Google search for “homes for sale” in which a lot of users are being served the Google Base “Refine your search for homes for sale” box.

The change is a mix of local and niche search by Google, which is hosting the search result content in the reality feeds indexed and updated using the Google Base system.

A good bit of the blogs covering this news point to GoodROI.com which may have broke the story:

Since they are already showing three paid listings on top of the organic search results it is interesting they would take away even more page real estate to add a search box for real estate listings in Google Base.

If they keep this up it will not matter if you rank #1 since no organic search results will be above the fold. Google Base is still free so it wouldn’t be adding revenue.

The tests I did returned pages that are already in their standard search index. I don’t really see a good reason for this, unless Google is laying down the groundwork for more specialized searching (after all you can only expect so much relevance when you have a single user input box)

In addition, other search bloggers have also piped up:

Barry Schwartz: “Just an other reminder there are many ways to reach the number one spot in Google, outside of the main organic results.”

Scubajarhead on Webmaster World: “This is going to turn into a nightmare especially for the real estate searches. Thousands of real estate agents are just going to bulk upload data from the MLS and just cause a load of duplicate content.

My clients spend thousands of hours creating unique content for their websites to get a first page listing for terms such as [large city] Real Estate. Its is very disheartening to see now Google directing traffic to their own product right on top of the natural listings. I think Google is heading down the wrong road with this addition to the SERPS. ”

Members of Threadwatch also remind us that Reality is only one of the niche market search groups featuring Google Base content with Google Music, Froogle, and Travel / Desination searches all featuring Base driven info.

Source: Search Engine Journal

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